Friday, April 10, 2015

A HUGE Ginter Trade w/ Matt: Part V: Hits Galore!

Welcome back to the final post detailing the plethora of Allen & Ginter's cards sent to me by blog reader Matt. For the final post, we take a look at the six hits that the trade included...and we begin with Alan Francis - the horseshoe pitching champion.

In my humble opinion, the 2010 Allen & Ginter relic set was one of the best because of the pure variety of subjects (both baseball and nonbaseball). It's one of the reasons that I decided to actually try and collect all one hundred relics from the set. It's been a long, slow process but I am still making progress with my goal!

After all, where else but Ginter can you get relics of horseshoe guys that most of us have never heard of alongside relics of championship basketball coaches?!

I definitely would have preferred to have something besides a white swatch here, but otherwise this is a nice looking card. Could the white swatch actually be from the shirt in the photo of Donovan? I highly doubt it but at least the holder of card knows that Ann Donovan has worn white at some point in time.

The final white swatch relic from the trade is of Johnny Strange (the youngest person to climb the Seven Summits).

I have no interest in climbing - but I can respect the fact that it's an incredibly difficult (and dangerous) thing to do...so being the youngest to conquer all seven summits is certainly no small feat. If you try to Google Johnny Strange though be prepared to see sites talking about a different Johnny (same spelling). The other Johnny is known for having earlobes of steel - he holds the world record for pulling a Cessna 172-P aircraft over 20 ft using his ear lobes. I'm definitely glad Topps chose to showcase the climber Johnny rather than the strong earlobed Johnny!

Moving out of the land of unknown for a moment, the next relic is of Stuart Scott - a person that just about any sports fan in America knows.

Unfortunately, Stuart passed away early this year but he left a legacy of catch phrases and general announcing excellence in his wake. It is definitely nice to have a relic of Scott in my collection - and it's even better that the little cloth swatch is something other than solid white (or grey).

The final relic of the trade was actually my favorite card in the entire trade:

That's Hoard & Rory - Hoard is actually Tony Hoard (the thrower of the Frisbee) and Rory is the dog (the catcher of the Frisbee). I love this card because the relic piece is an actual chunk of one of the throwing discs used by Hoard & Rory. To me, this is the perfect kind of relic to include in Ginter - it's unique, fun, and something that you wouldn't find a home for in any other kind of set!

While the Allen & Ginter portion of the trade with Matt was obviously awesome in its own right, Matt also threw in a single bonus card for me - and it's the perfect way to end a week's worth of trade posts from the same person.

Yep, we end with a Reds' autograph!

Many thanks for the great swap Matt. And, as always, if anyone else would like to trade - be sure to check out my want list and make an offer!